West Bengal Pradesh Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury today said that the state's economy was in a sorry state and contested Trinamool Congress all-India general secretary Mukul Roy's claim that economic development was taking place.

Chowdhury was referring to Roy's comments carried in a section of the press that if one compared the country's GDP with the state's GSDP, he could realise that Bengal had forged ahead in economic development in the last three years.

"Roy's claims regarding the state's economy are absolutely untrue. He is trying to mislead Bengal's people... TMC leaders may not like it, but the state's GDP has actually gone down every year since 2011-12," Chowdhury said addressing journalists at the party office here.

"The state's economy has been sluggish... the growth was highest in 2011-12, but since then it has been declining. West Bengal is in a very sorry state. In states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, the GDP is higher than ours," the Congress leader claimed.

Reacting to suspended TMC MP Kunal Ghosh writing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the Saradha scam probe, Chowdhury said he was hopeful that the NDA government at the Centre would leave no stone unturned to punish those behind the scam.

"I think the NDA government will leave no stone unturned in unearthing all those involved in the Saradha scam... I am hopeful Modiji will keep his promise of bringing all those who were involved in the scam to book," Chowdhury said.

Ghosh, who is currently in jail facing charges of involvement in the scam, in his letter to Modi has alleged political interference in the Saradha chit fund scam, media reports said.

Chowdhury also alleged that the state government had "failed" to control encephalitis and trotted out wrong figures regarding the number of deaths in the disease.

He said he had demanded that the Centre set up a virology institute in Kolkata for the eastern region of the country.